Influence of air leakage from building façade on the energy efficiency of air conditioning system in Tropic Asia

Abstract

Many buildings are being built in Southeast Asian cities due to rapid economic growth. Because large-scale buildings, such as office buildings, in particular, consume a large amount of energy, it is essential to construct environmental buildings for global climate change. Despite the improving airtight performance of building envelopes for effective energy saving, almost no research regarding them in Southeast Asia is done at present. Therefore, this paper aims to determine the current state of energy conservation effects of office buildings in Asian cities. This research adopts on-site measurement and energy-simulation methods to evaluate the sealing performance of the office building envelope in Bangkok, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei. In the field survey, the CO2 leakage rate from the building envelope, covered with a vinyl cloth, is investigated using the tracer gas method. In addition, air quality, internal and external differential pressure, and energy consumption are measured. Furthermore, indoor environmental quality such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, CO2 density, clo value and MRT are measured. The evaluation of the energy conservation performance of the target buildings is multifaceted. In the energy simulation part of this study, actual data are used with simulation software to calculate the energy performance of the heating and cooling load. This research is focused on energy conservation in Hanoi because the amount of air leakage was higher there than the other cities in Tropical Asia. Furthermore, we verified how much of the energy conservation is realized by changing the performance of the air leakage in the model. This paper discusses the current situation of Asian buildings in terms of the results and suggests an appropriate energy conservation model for Asian tropical office buildings.